Archive for March 19th, 2009

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.

Milenio (Mexico City) 3/18/09

* Following is an op/col by Roman Revueltas , “The daily routine in the country of the thieves”
I read a very disheartening item. The public schools are looted, daily, by thieves who take away computers, monitors, blackboards, microphones, speakers, printers, cables, TV sets and everything which may have the least value, including the kids’ meals. I assume this breakdown was not foreseen in the Enciclomedia (sic) program, the educational crown jewel of Fox’s Government, in which they spent millions.
Another news item reports that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) looses something like 7 thousand million (sic) pesos each year due to theft of electric current. I no longer have in my head the amount of what they swipe from Pemex by drilling holes in its gas and oil pipelines, but the amount is hair raising. I imagine that the losses of that national disgrace named Luz y Fuerza del Centro (Central Light and Power) the mastodon-like corporation in charge of distributing – since it practically does not produce it – electricity to the long suffering residents of the middle of the country, are at least as large as those of the CFE because, speaking of thefts, the un-governed capital of all the Mexicans is in a class by itself.
Transportation workers also suffer losses – their trucks are held up like in the days of the stage coaches, those wagons that carried money to the Far West in the 19th Century – and the importers of appliances and the tavern keepers and the builders and any person who produces or sells anything.
What I mean to say is that Mexico is a country of thieves. Everybody steals. The houses resemble fortresses or, better yet, prisons with bars on the windows. And the huge majority of transactions are enormously complicated because each and everyone of us is under suspicion. The other day I bought an airline ticket on the internet for my favorite daughter so that she could visit me during the long weekend. Well, it was necessary for one to go in person to the airport with photocopies of my passport and my credit card. What crap. (Here, the author used a stronger four letter word)

* On Ribera del Prado St., in Reynosa, Tamaulipas: a house where Mex. military seized “more than” 50 kilos of cocaine, long and short barrel firearms, some 87 thousand dollars, 113 pieces of jewelry, 8 radios, 4 cell phones and three vehicles (one of them a Tahoe with TX lic. RCR375)

———Tamaulipas en linea (Matamoros, Tamaulipas) 3/18/09

Mex. army personnel found fifty-five persons “of foreign appearance” who had been held against their will for up to twenty days in a safe house in Reynosa, Tamps.; one was from the southern state of Oaxaca and the other fifty-four from five Central American countries. Some were found tied. The detainees were all hoping to cross the border illegally into the United States and were waiting for money to be sent by their relatives. (Reynosa is just across the border from McAllen, TX, just upriver from Brownsville)———

El Diario de Coahuila (Saltillo, Coahuila) 3/18/09

The State of Coahuila A.G.’s office confirmed that the driver of the truck which smashed into a tourist bus and killed eleven U.S. & Canadian tourists was drunk.
Another sixteen persons in the crash are reported gravely wounded. The owner of the truck said he had no insurance.
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El Diario (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 3/18/09

Despite the increased presence of the military in Juarez there were seventeen kidnappings in that city during February. Only one of those cases has resulted in the detention of the criminals.
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Norte (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 3/18/09

* The 1,600 city police agents of Ciudad Juarez were disarmed on Tuesday 17th by the new officials in command of public security in Juarez ; all of these new officials are recent higher ranking ex-military.
* Juarez had 240 homicides during the month of February, a new record.
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El Imparcial (Hermosillo, Sonora) 3/18/09

Rudy E. Estudillo, recent ex-chief of the federal police in Tijuana, Baja Calif., was detained by “SIEDO” ( Mex. equiv. to DEA ) due to his links with organized crime.
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El Siglo de Torreon (Torreon, Coahuila) 3/18/09

Mexico’s “SEDENA” (equiv.: Dep’t. of Defense) reported that firearms, grenades, a rocket launcher and more than five thousand rounds of ammunition were found and seized from a vehicle in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. The vehicle is a Chev. Tahoe (Tex. lic. XCT-6990) reported stolen. The haul included eight “long barrel” firearms, most of them assault rifles, plus a sub-machine gun, pistols and 140 loaders for rifles and pistols. There were also radios, grenade carriers, bandoleers and other “combat equipment.”
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